Michelle Evans

Professor Michelle Evans holds a Professorship in Leadership at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne, with a joint appointment of Associate Professorship in Leadership and Associate Dean, Indigenous, at the Melbourne Business School. She is the inaugural Director of the Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership, focusing on engagement, research, and teaching for Indigenous economic empowerment. A Fulbright scholar, Evans earned her PhD from the Melbourne Business School, Master of Creative Arts from the University of Melbourne, Graduate Diploma in Arts Management from the Victorian College of the Arts, and BA from Charles Sturt University. She co-founded Australia's number one Indigenous Business Master Class program, MURRA, at Melbourne Business School; founded the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music; and established the WALAN MAYINYGU Indigenous entrepreneurship Pop Up innovation hub program at Charles Sturt University in 2017-2018. Evans has taught and mentored over 250 Australian Indigenous business people through various programs and serves on national and international committees focused on Indigenous advancement and engagement excellence.

Her research specializations encompass Indigenous political participation and leadership, Indigenous andragogy, preferential procurement programs, social mobility, entrepreneurial leadership, and arts leadership. Evans has attracted three Australian Research Council grants on Australian Indigenous entrepreneurial leadership and the impact of Indigenous preferential procurement policy. Key publications include 'Navigating the territories of Indigenous leadership: Exploring the experiences and practices of Australian Indigenous arts leaders' (Leadership, 2015), 'Containing, contesting, creating spaces: leadership and cultural identity work among Australian Indigenous arts leaders' (Leadership, 2016), 'Surfacing assumptions via ‘metaxic’ method: an arts-based method for team fieldwork' (Qualitative Research, 2019), 'What silence can teach us about race and leadership' (Leadership, 2021), 'Integrating andragogical philosophy with Indigenous teaching and learning' (Management Learning, 2020), and 'Indigenous entrepreneurial motivations: Purpose, Profit and Leadership' (Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2017). Awards include the Best Paper award at the Academy of Management Conference, Critical Management Studies Division (2017), and the CPA Australia/ABDC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Business Education Collaboration (2016) for MURRA.

Professional Email: michelle.evans@unimelb.edu.au